The B2B publishing division retained the Emap name after the split, with the events division re-branded as i2i and the data business becoming 4C.

Duncan Painter, who joined from BSkyB almost a year ago, told today’s PPA Digital Publishing Conference that the company aims to recruit 100 graduates a year to bring in new talent. The firm is also re-investing in training.

“Emap was at its greatest when it had lots of small, focused businesses,” he said, explaining that the company is again focussing on its core business.

When asked about the possibility of Top Right buying other businesses, Painter said he is not ruling out acquisitions, but favours launches.

He said the company aims to launch “three times as many products next year as this year.”

Emap’s owners – the Guardian Media Group (GMG) and Apax – have pledged to pump more money into the publisher, the Sunday Times reports:

The pair are gearing up to support an acquisition drive with fresh funds after rejecting proposals to relax covenants on Emap’s £700m of debt because it would be too expensive.

Emap, which was acquired for £1 billion in 2007, warned in its last set of accounts of “significant doubt” that it could carry on as a going concern if economic conditions deteriorate or renegotiations with lenders failed.

Vaughan, who writes for Caterer and Hotelkeeper, picked up the overall award and new business features journalist too. Unfortunately (or fortunately for him) he was in absent – busy holidaying in Switzerland – and had the awards collected on his behalf.

The awards, which focus on new or young journalists in the UK magazine industry, also saw prizes for Jheni Osman, editor of Focus from BBC Magazines, who was named new editor of the year.

Further to reports today, that Emap is to make content from its Inform titles (which include Health Service Journal, Retail Week and its Drapers brands) free online, we have been told that is not really news. In fact, all the sites have been made free over the last few months.

“All new content created on Emap Inform sites is now free to air,” Conor Dignam, Emap’s digital director, told Journalism.co.uk.

“Some of our older archives remain behind either subs or registration barriers, but they too will go free overtime. We’re also moving all Emap Inform brands to a new CMS and redesigning all of the websites.

“This is a reflection of what we see as a different relationship with print and online users. There may be some content that remains behind barriers on some of the brands, but for the most part we are looking at our online content being free to air,” Dignam said.

“The editors here have welcomed that move which is putting more content in front of their audiences and bringing more relevant people to their sites.”

UPDATE: a Tweet from Martin Stabe alerts us that in fact most of the titles’ content is already free online: J.co.uk is on the case and will up date soon.

B2B publisher Emap ‘is to scrap subscription charges on a number of its website next year,’ reports Press Gazette. The changes affect the Emap Inform division, which includes Health Service Journal, Retail Week and Drapers.